Chris Waters: Bad misjudgment of the time and place to encourage team-bonding

Middlesex County Cricket Club are the latest to have gone to Auschwitz, scene of the systematic slaughter of more than one million Jews in the Second World War. It follows similar visits by the England cricket team to Dachau in the build-up to the 2010-11 Ashes and by the England football team to Auschwitz ahead of the 2012 European Championships. It does not sit easy with me, I have to confess. In an interview last week with the London Evening Standard, Angus Fraser, the Middlesex managing director of cricket, explained the rationale behind his side’s trip. Fraser said he wanted to take his players “out of their comfort zone” and “do something that’s thought provoking”. He added: “Before the 2011 season, we went to the World War I battlefield at Ypres, in Belgium, and even now the players still talk about it. “That pre-season, we also spent some time at the Royal Marines’ training camp in Plymouth and talked to soldiers who’d spent time in Afghanistan. The players still mention that too. “The deeper you go emotionally, the closer the players will feel to each other. “Hopefully, the benefit of those shared experiences will come through during the summer, when we’re undoubtedly going to be tested.” And therein lies my problem with this … “Hopefully, the benefit of those shared experiences will come through during the summer, when we’re undoubtedly going to be tested.” By definition, Fraser therefore hopes that by going to Auschwitz, it will help to improve his team’s performances in county cricket and to give them a better chance of winning silverware. The Evening Standard report apparently confirmed this when it added that “these experiences may, Fraser hopes, have fortified his players in some small way for when the time comes to play competitive cricket. After finishing fifth in the Championship last summer, Middlesex will seek to push for the title in the months ahead.” This is an emotive subject, and I am not for one minute suggesting that Fraser or anyone connected with Middlesex CCC has deliberately exploited this trip for professional advantage, while it goes without saying that all the Middlesex contingent who went to Auschwitz were deeply touched by the experience. What I am suggesting, however, is that a growing number of sports teams – however well-intentioned – are not thinking this through properly and stopping to consider the full implications. Fraser also said that he wanted his players to “appreciate how lucky they are to do what they do and to understand better the world in which they live”, which is an admirable objective by an admirable man. But if your boss suddenly announced that he was taking you and a few of your colleagues off to Auschwitz next week, so you can appreciate how lucky you are to have a job in a world where too many people are not so fortunate, you might very well wonder what the point of it is. Of course, the real problem here – which Fraser correctly highlights – is that some players do need to appreciate how lucky they are in a world where too many sportsmen, quite frankly, are detached from reality. Fraser himself will be old enough to remember a time when many professional cricketers had to find jobs during the winter and go out into the “real world”, so to speak. Those players knew perfectly how lucky they were because they toiled in the same industries as those who forked out to watch them play. They were not cocooned in a bubble or prone to inflated ideas of their own self-worth because they related to the average man in the street and his day-to-day challenges. Auschwitz may offer a sense of perspective, but I would contend that it is more of a dose of abnormality than reality unless you happen to be directly affected in some way, seeing as it was part of an abnormally evil, abhorrent regime. If any sportsman wishes to visit that terrible place on an individual basis, for his own private reasons, I have absolutely no problem with that, and it is of course vital that the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten to ensure that they are never repeated, which is why it is so important to educate our children. Similarly, if a concentration camp is the chosen destination for a school trip, or a common interest group, for the purpose of education and commemoration, that is fine too. But is it right for a sports team to use it as a destination for team-bonding and to bring people closer together? I would say a resounding “no”. And another thing... AS an avid Lincoln City supporter, I love my football– if that is not a contradiction in terms. But if there is one thing guaranteed to bore me to tears it is football takeover sagas. Take the one at Leeds United, for example. This seems to have been dragging on for so long that I can barely remember a time when it was not dragging on. And how I sympathise with my colleagues on the The Yorkshire Post/Yorkshire Evening Post sports desk whose task it is to document every twist and turn of this tedious story. The last time I checked, the Football League were expecting to reach a verdict on Massimo Cellino’s proposed takeover of the club in the next few days. Cellino’s bid for a majority stake in Leeds was said to rest on tax evasion charges being brought against him in Italy this week. All I can say is, I hope to goodness it is sorted out soon. For I don’t know about you, but I can hardly take any more excitement.